


Hand on Your Heart

by Littlefeather



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 07:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlefeather/pseuds/Littlefeather
Summary: Fic prompt: Sansa recognizes Sandor by his hands. She could encounter him as a hooded and robed brother on the Quiet Isle or he could show up in the Vale in disguise, but Sansa knows it’s him because she’d know those hands anywhere.





	Hand on Your Heart

The dying light set the Giant’s Lance aflame, the illuminated backdrop bathing the courtyard in deep shadows. Sansa stood at her window in the Maiden’s Tower, watching the procession with bated breath. Silently she murmured prayers to the gods.

Behind her, the solar door unlatched.

_He never knocks. He never asks my permission for anything. _Stubbornly she smoothed the tears from her cheek, refusing to turn to meet her visitor.

“Alayne, our guests are here. Receive them, won’t you, Sweetling?” Her father’s oily tone grated in her ears.

_Our guests. Your guests, more like. _

Setting her shoulders, Sansa forced a smile and moved past him. “As you wish, Father.”

Baelish stopped her short. “These men are a means to an end, Alayne, for the Vale and Winterfell. Remember that.”

“I will, Father.” Sansa bowed politely and hastily left the room.

* * *

Sansa remembered it all too well: the rough roads rocking the wagon on the long trip to the Quiet Isle. The assessment of her maidenhead, the fever, the pain, nausea and sweats, the worried whispers and chanted supplications, and above all, of being left alone: alone to die, alone to live out her life as a Silent Sister. Sansa heard the voices of her brother and father calling to her, and Lady howling in the distance, and she prayed to be set free from life.

But the gods had other plans for her.

The novice who cared for her through the worst of the illness, the huge, heavily muscled Warrior- no, man - with a limp who never left her side, had fought the Stranger on her behalf and Sansa survived. It was not the first time he had done so, and she hoped it would not be the last.

She never saw the face hidden behind a rough woolen scarf, nor had she needed to: Sansa would recognize him anywhere. The huge hands, worn and battle-scarred, rinsing the cloth as he bathed her, not ungently. Deep, tanned, heavily veined skin against her paleness. The tenderness of his long, calloused fingers stroking her cheek with softness both familiar and yet new to her. Warmth, safety, and protection, promises given in each gentle contact between his hands and her skin. The hands of a killer. The hands of a gravedigger. The hands of Sandor Clegane.

The rasps of _wolf bird, _real or imagined, reminding her of her past endurance, fortified her. Longing for the feel of his hands replaced the hazy weight of fever, and Sansa would pretend to sleep, hoping that he would touch her. He always did, though he would recoil as though burned if she so much as moved.

Sansa wondered idly if he would do the same today.

_The Seven have blessed our Elder Brother with healing hands. He has restored many a man to health that even the maesters could not cure, and many a woman too,_ Brother Narbert’s words returned to her; it seemed they had extended their gifts to Sandor Clegane as well, a man who kept no gods, and yet they remembered him_._

_Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him, _she had prayed. _And so they had._

When she recovered, Petyr and Harry predictably returned to the Quiet Isle, ready to carry her away from those gentle hands, ready to resume the game of thrones. But Alayne had died there, and Sansa was reborn. The old gods and the new had made it so, and she would not, could not, go back.

Smoothing down her skirts, Sansa hesitated before entering the Crescent Chamber. _No, Lord Baelish, I won’t forget._

The shrieks of cloth rending, steel clashing, men dying, and her father – no, Lord Baelish – _screaming_, pulled her inside. Strong hands reached for her then, steadying her, drawing her into the heavily muscled arms she knew so well.

“I’m a man of my word, lass. No one will hurt you again, or I’ll kill them.”


End file.
